Plan for Memorial to Civil War Group Splits Texas Town Anew

By ROSS E. MILLOY

Published: February 27, 2000

COMFORT, Tex., Feb. 26—
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, military authorities in Texas issued an ultimatum to the citizens: take oaths of allegiance to the Confederacy or suffer the consequences. A group of nearly 100 immigrant German intellectuals now known as ''freethinkers,'' opposed to slavery and secession, fled south from here toward the Mexican border to join the Union forces or wait out the war in Mexico.

Caught en route by Confederate militiamen, 36 of the freethinkers were killed in two separate battles and their remains were returned to this small farming community for burial. A marker was erected that read ''Treue der Union'' (''Loyalty to the Union'') and for more than a century the freethinkers have rested under the branches of a giant liveoak tree.

But recent efforts to build a memorial to them has set off yet another battle, this one tinged with the very issues that cost them their lives. In addition to their outspoken support for equal rights and free speech, many freethinkers were atheists or agnostics, a fact that some of their descendants in this highly religious community with six churches find distasteful.

When proponents of the memorial wanted wording on a historical marker to note that the freethinkers followed no religious dogma and built no churches, more than 700 people opposed the wording with a petition headlined ''No Monument to Atheism in Comfort.''

The Texas State Historical Commission, trapped in a cross-fire over the project, turned to five outside scholars to resolve the matter, and the revised text they suggested said the freethinkers ''strongly supported secular education and generally did not adhere to any formal religious doctrines.''

But still, as with the Civil War, the debate over the marker's wording has divided families here.

''There's a lot of discomfort in Comfort over this project right now,'' said Gregory Krauter, 49, one of the initiators of the memorial, whose family has lived here for seven generations.

''Early on, a lot of local people had a problem with the word 'dogma,' so we agreed to drop that. But scholars say the fact that they built no churches is a singular characteristic because most other communities built churches before they even built schools. So now we have people trying to change history, and to me, that's 'verboten,' '' he said.

Roy O. Perkins, Mr. Krauter's cousin, opposes the project because his branch of the freethinkers were Lutherans.

''We're proud of our heritage but we want that heritage to be historically correct,'' Mr. Perkins said. ''This is just not right.''

And Frank Manitzas, a 65-year-old lawyer related to the original settlers by marriage, believes proponents of the memorial are trying to hijack the history of the freethinkers to serve their own ends.

''The role of atheism ascribed by the atheist community and the modern revisionists to those immigrants as 'freethinkers' has been grossly distorted and exaggerated,'' Mr. Manitzas said.

Both sides agree on one thing: Whatever role religion may have had in their lives, the original German immigrants should be honored. Among their ranks were barons and noted scientists, musicians and scholars, all of whom entered Texas in the late 1840's fleeing religious and political repression in Germany. Some of their settlements became known as ''Latin colonies'' because of their practice of conducting political and philosophical debates in Latin, and that legacy of intellectual combativeness lingers today in Comfort.

Local officials originally paid little attention to plans to erect the monument. Edwin Scharf, a real estate agent and history buff from nearby Helotes, got approvals from various historical societies and the Comfort Chamber of Commerce, put up a 13-foot-tall limestone obelisk, and scheduled a dedication ceremony for affixing a historical plaque.

On the eve of the dedication, Mr. Manitzas and Mr. Perkins say, they learned that the Atheist Community of Austin had contributed $500 for the monolith and planned annual demonstrations at the site to celebrate freedom from religion.

''That's just stealing the history of our ancestors for their own purposes,'' Mr. Manitzas said. ''We have Bibles, ship logs, diaries, all sorts of things that prove some of these people believed in God.''

They may not have adhered to a specific religion, Mr. Manitzas admitted, ''but to call them all atheists is to completely rewrite the facts.''

Disputes about the wording of the plaque, and now, the 32-ton monolith itself (described by Mr. Manitzas as ''offensive'') have put the entire project at risk. The local chamber of commerce has withdrawn its support and asked that the obelisk be removed, which Mr. Scharf said, ''I'll get around to eventually.''

To those residents not directly involved with the conflict, the subject has become wearisome.

Billy Jan Smith, 63, found watering window boxes in front of his house on Comfort's main street, says he believes the whole project should be abandoned.

''This thing has been misrepresented from the beginning and now everybody in town is bent out of shape about it,'' Mr. Smith said. ''They should just call it off.''

Mr. Smith, who has lived here 38 years, summed up his attitude in a cantankerous display of irreverence that might even have made the fiercely iconoclastic freethinkers proud: ''I don't see what we need a monument for in the first place. Those people were turncoats and got massacred, which was just what they deserved.''

On Friday, at its first meeting of the new century, the Texas Historical Commission granted final approval for the new historical marker's text as suggested by the outside scholars and deleting any reference to churches. The text was approved by a subcommittee and recommended by the commission's staff, John Nau, the chairman, said.

''I think it is important to note that the commission thought the staff went above and beyond the call of duty by bringing in outside scholars to make certain that the final text itself was historically accurate,'' Mr. Nau said.

While the commission met in Dallas, the flag flew as always at half-staff at the current memorial, one of only six sites with Congressional approval to do so perpetually, including Arlington National Cemetery, the battleship Arizona at Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War Memorial at Gettysburg.

And directly across the street, at Immanual Lutheran, a sign out front boldly proclaimed that church's mission: ''Building God's Kingdom for the 21st Century.''

Map of Texas shows the location of Comfort: Comfort, Tex., where some Civil War figures are buried.